Adam Battle is the recipient of the 2023 LPL Leif Andersson Award for Service and Outreach.

Adam is a fourth-year graduate student who has demonstrated a commitment to service to his fellow graduate students and to the broader community since he joined LPL in 2019 and, in fact, even before beginning his graduate career.

As an undergraduate student, Adam supported his community as a volunteer at a food pantry and an ambassador for science, participating in activities like star parties and science fairs. As a graduate student, Adam has continued to encourage a passion for science and to support students in their career development.

In 2021, Adam worked with a Tucson Magnet High School student on a science fair project that collected data using the RAPTORS telescope on top of the Kuiper building. Adam wrote detailed manuals so that the student and their teacher could reduce the data on their own. The student won the Smithsonian Institution's Whipple Observatory Award at the Southern Arizona Research, Science and Engineering Foundation science fair and the student was invited to be the keynote speaker at the observatory's lecture series. And he has mentored two undergraduate students, one of which was accepted into a graduate planetary science program.

Adam's service to the department includes his work in organizing the annual Lunar and Planetary Lab Conference for 2020 and 2021. Adam was instrumental in pivoting the 2020 conference to a successful virtual meeting and returned in 2021 to support the in-person off-site conference. In his first semester at LPL, Adam volunteered as webmaster for The Art of Planetary Science (TAPS), a position he continues to hold. In that role, Adam saved the 2020 TAPS exhibit by working with the department webmaster to implement an online web gallery that made the program available to a global audience during the COVID-19 pandemic. His work as TAPS webmaster continues to support improvements to registration and archiving.

In addition to receiving the Andersson Award, Adam was the LPL nominee for the College of Science Graduate Excellence Award for Service. Adam's dedication to a service impact outside of his academic responsibilities embodies the spirit of the Andersson Award for Service.

The LPL Andersson Award for Service and Outreach is awarded annually to a PTYS graduate student in recognition for attention to broader impacts and involvement in activities outside of academic responsibilities that benefit the department, university, and the larger community. The award is named for Dr. Leif Andersson, a scientist who worked at LPL in the 1970s. Support the Andersson Award with a gift.